LOREX People

LOREX: Participant Biographies

Principal Investigators

Adina Paytan - Research Professor, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

Adina Paytan is a research professor at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her principal research interests lie in the fields of biogeochemistry, chemical oceanography, and paleoceanography. The goal of her research is to use the chemical and isotopic records enclosed in diverse earth materials to study present and past biogeochemical processes. This research spans a wide range of temporal (seasons to millions of years) and spatial (molecular to global) scales. An overarching goal of this research is to understand the processes and feedbacks operating in the Earth System and how they relate to global changes in climate and tectonics. In addition, Adina is interested in natural and anthropogenically induced perturbations that affect biogeochemical processes and their impact on humans and the environment. Adina considers education and outreach as integral components of her scientific activity and dedicates time to providing professional development and mentoring opportunities to students of all ages and early-career scientists. Adina is an ASLO Fellow and served as an associate editor for Limnology and Oceanography Methods. You can contact her at [email protected]

Michael Pace - ASLO President

Michael Pace's research focuses on aquatic ecosystems with an emphasis on food web interactions and biogeochemistry. He works in a variety of environments including lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and coastal lagoons. He is currently conducting research on resilience of aquatic ecosystems, effects of invasive species, synchrony of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and harmful algal blooms. His work considers questions about the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems and the causes and consequences of environmental change.

Michael received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia. He did his graduate work at the University of Georgia receiving an M.S. in Zoology and Ph.D. in Ecology. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and an Assistant Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii. Prior to joining the University of Virginia in 2008, he was a Senior Scientist and Assistant Director at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. He is currently a Commonwealth Professor at the University of Virginia. He was recognized by ASLO with the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Medal in 2009 and by the International Society of Limnology with the Naumann-Thienemann Medal in 2016. He served as ASLO President from 2018-2020.

Linda Duguay - ASLO Past-President

Linda Duguay received her BA in Biology from the University of Rhode Island (URI) and her MS and Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the University of Miami (UM), Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. She is the Director of the University of Southern California (USC) Sea Grant Program and Director of Research for the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at USC. She served as President of ASLO from 2016-2018).

Linda's research interests are in plankton ecology of ctenophores, algal invertebrate symbioses, benthic ecology with a focus on disturbance in dredge material sites and problems of the urban ocean such as water quality and changing climate effects on ecosystems.

Brittany Schieler, ASLO Director of Communications and Programs

[email protected]

LOREX and Science Communication Fellow

Rachel Weisend - Spring and Summer 2023

Rachel Weisend is a marine geomicrobiologist currently finishing her PhD at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi. Her research focuses on how microbial communities drive methane production and consumption. During her Ph.D., Rachel has pursued international collaborations from being in the inaugural Limnology and Oceanography Research Exchange (LOREX) cohort in New South Wales, Australia, and most recently sailing on expedition NBP-2301 to the Ross Sea, Antarctica.

As the ASLO Sci Comm intern, Rachel plans to expand her love for international collaborative research by working with the third LOREX Cohort and Global Outreach Initiative. Rachel is looking forward to gaining experience in project management, science communication, and publishing during her internship.

You can contact her at [email protected]

Former LOREX Fellows

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Fall 2019-Spring 2020

Spring 2019

Fall 2019

Jessica Bellworthy

Eilea Knotts

Brittany Schieler

Maha Cziesielski

LOREX Participants

2023 Cohort

Dalhousie University

Jordan Snyder
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jordan is a 2nd year PhD student at University of California, Santa Barbara where she uses low-altitude remote sensing techniques to measure flow dynamics in the coastal ocean. After completing a MSc in Optical Oceanography at the University of Maine, Orono, she worked as a technician at UCSB and discovered the capabilities of remote sensing via aerial drones. Using thermal infrared cameras, she is making centimeter-scale observations of mixing and turbulence in coastal environments, namely around kelp forests and small creek outflows. This summer Jordan will join Dr. Ruth Musgrave and her group at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and contribute to their ocean alkalinity project in the Bedford Basin. Here she will quantify mixing times and surface flow fields as part of a tracer release experiment. This work will supplement her studies in California where she is testing a Particle Image Velocimetry method in combination with drone imagery to observe fine-scale mixing in the coastal ocean. She hopes to apply this technique to other physical phenomenon on the inner shelf, such as terminating internal waves in the Santa Barbara Channel and mixing at frontal zones.

Marina Fennell
University of California, Irvine

Marina Fennell is a Ph.D. candidate working with Professor Francois Primeau in the Earth System Science department at the University of California, Irvine. Her thesis involves the development and application of a new Bayesian solver for overdetermined datasets of seawater carbon dioxide-system chemistry. Existing solvers like CO₂SYS solve the exactly determined system, where only two parameters are measured. Consequently, the uncertainty results are calculated by propagation of errors. Her new Bayesian solver, QUODcarb, can handle the exactly determined or overdetermined cases. It formulates a Bayesian problem and finds the most probable CO₂-system state given the measurements and their precisions. QUODcarb then summarizes the posterior probability distribution by approximating it using a Gaussian distribution, from which it draws uncertainty estimates. She intends to use QUODcarb to investigate the use of internal consistency of marine carbonate chemistry to help identify sources of measurement bias.

A good understanding of the internal consistency of marine carbon dioxide system measurements is important for tracking the ocean’s uptake and inventory or anthropogenic carbon, among numerous other fields. To continue to improve understanding of the internal consistency of independent measurements of the carbonate system, studies assess the quality of their data with overdetermined measurements. During her LOREX exchange, Marina will be working with Professor Douglas Wallace and his students and colleagues at Dalhousie University in Canada. Professor Wallace and his team have collected an overdetermined dataset that can be used in conjunction with QUODcarb to uncover new answers to internal consistency and measurement challenges currently being discussed in the ocean carbon monitoring community. A pilot application of her new solver, Marina hopes the seagoing oceanographers at Dalhousie University will provide excellent input for usability of the new solver.

Haifa University, Israel

Jeanne Bloomberg
Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography

Jeanne is a first-year PhD student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography. She studies the effects of coral disease and the environment on the microbial communities of tropical coral reefs. Specifically, she is interested in quantifying corals’ ability to shift their microbiomes in response to a changing habitat. Previously, Jeanne completed her M.S. in oceanography and coastal sciences from Louisiana State University. There she studied coral reproduction over depth, focusing on mesophotic reefs and their potential as refugia. During her LOREX exchange, Jeanne plans to dovetail her research interests with her work with Dr. Tali Mass at the University of Haifa. She will characterize the microbial communities of shallow and mesophotic reefs in the Red Sea, and then assess if transferring microbes from mesophotic to shallow corals in aquaria experiments can enhance coral resilience. As microbial research is under-utilized for coral restoration, Jeanne’s research can shed light on how to apply microbial information to increase the success of restoration efforts. Jeanne completed her B.S. in marine biology at from Northeastern University, where she participated in the Three Seas Program, and she was a fellow in the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program Science Policy Fellowship.

Antrelle Clark
Auburn University

Antrelle is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Moss lab at Auburn University. She is a proud (Dallas) Texas native, who in her free time enjoys scuba diving, hiking, holiday decorating, taking pictures of the moon with her telescope, and spending time with her husky pup, Glacier. Before pursuing her Ph.D. in Marine Biology, she earned her Associate’s in Biology from Western Texas College and her Bachelor’s in Aquatic Ecology from Tarleton State University. As an undergrad, she studied diatoms found on the carapace and neck of the seven sea turtle species found in the Gulf of Mexico. The goals of this project were (1) to identify the diatom species found on the sampled sea turtles, (2) determine whether the diatom species preferred a certain surface on the sea turtle, and (3) to use the diatoms as an indicator for migratory patterns and health. Studying their symbiosis is what drove Antrelle’s current research interest; however, using a different model. Her dissertation focuses on understanding the cellular/molecular mechanism(s) responsible for Gymnamoebae’s successful association with the comb plates of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi and how climatic factors can influence the state of their relationship. This research topic is important to her because while there have been numerous studies on different symbiotic relationships (i.e., corals-zooxanthellae, squid-Vibrio), no studies have focused on the ctenophore-amoeba model. Through the ASLO LOREX, Antrelle will be working with Dr. Dror Angel at the University of Haifa to identify whether amoebae found on ctenophores in the Mediterranean Sea are of the same/different species as the amoebae found on the ctenophores she collects from the Gulf of Mexico. Completing this research in the Mediterranean Sea is important to Antrelle because studies have shown that the ctenophore populations found in the Mediterranean Sea originate from the Gulf of Mexico. The focus of this research centers around climate change, with the objective of seeing whether varying locations and conditions determine if amoebae (and if so, what species) can form these associations with the ctenophore. Through this program, she hopes to enhance her dissertation using the data collected, establish new connections through collaborative research, and expand her current knowledge on the model organisms she is using to study Earth’s changing climate.

Southern Cross University Lismore

Abby Webster
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Abby is a third-year PhD student in Dr. Roxanne Razavi’s Environmental Toxicology Lab at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF). Abby’s research interests can be broadly summarized as the connection and interaction between environmental and human health. Growing up spending lots of time outdoors with her family, Abby followed her natural love for field work while earning her BS in Biotechnology at SUNY ESF and found herself returning to aquatic research with every opportunity. For her PhD work, Abby is studying water quality in relation to harmful algal blooms and the presence of benthic cyanobacteria in lakes of New York State. Benthic cyanobacteria are far understudied compared to their planktonic counterparts, despite their ability to also produce harmful toxins. Due to this, drivers of benthic cyanobacteria proliferation and toxin production, and the role of benthic nutrients in these dynamics, are not well understood. For her LOREX project, Abby is investigating nitrogen uptake by diazotrophic (N₂-fixing) benthic cyanobacteria across differing N:P ratios in sediment using a stable isotope tracer method. To do this work, Abby is collaborating with Associate Professor Joanne Oakes and Professor Bradley Eyre at Southern Cross University’s Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry in Lismore, New South Wales. This work will enhance our understanding of nitrogen uptake by diazotrophic benthic cyanobacteria and how it changes with nutrient availability in freshwater systems. Abby looks forward to building collaborations at her host institution and with other LOREX students and exploring her interests (both research-related and non-) on an international scale.

Emmi Kurosawa
University of Massachusetts, Boston

I am a PhD candidate from the Biology Department at University of Massachusetts, Boston. I am a carnivorous plant enthusiast and am working on the diet shift between carnivory and autotrophy in carnivorous plants. I had the honor to participate in the first LOREX cohorts and had the wonderful collaboration with the Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry (CCB), Lismore NSW, Australia. We found correlations between the carnivory in the aquatic carnivorous bladderworts and nutrients in their habitat, using stable isotopes. The manuscript from this work is being synthesized, and will be submitted to a high impact journal soon. This will be my second opportunity working with the same team at the CCB. This time I will be measuring the trophic fractionation factor for botanical carnivory to reinforce the stable isotope mixing model we developed during the last collaboration and will address a knowledge gap highlighted by the previous work.

Umeå University

Adrianna Gorsky
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Adrianna Gorsky is a PhD candidate at the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the advisorship of Dr. Hilary Dugan and Dr. Emily Stanley. Her research is focused on urban waterbodies with an emphasis on water quality and greenhouse gas dynamics. In particular, one of her research topics is better understanding lake metabolism across space and seasons. Her LOREX-exchange project will help expand her knowledge of lake metabolism through a very different ecosystem in Abisko, Sweden with the Climate Impacts Research Centre. She will be working with Dr. Jan Karlsson and Dr. Ryan Sponseller, as well as additional collaborators, to explore an existing dataset of high frequency oxygen measurements from 14 lakes in the region to better understand the impacts of meteorology and a warming climate on whole-lake metabolism. She also plans to combine the data analysis with a field campaign to strengthen our understanding of the spatial variation of metabolism within a lake. Adrianna is very grateful for this opportunity and is looking forward to building relationships, developing new research skills, and experiencing a completely new ecosystem through this collaborative exchange.

Václava Hazukova
University of Maine

Václava is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Ecology and Environmental Science working with Dr. Jasmine Saros at the University of Maine. In her dissertation research, she aims to better understand how structure and function of Arctic lakes respond to climate change by integrating interacting sentinel responses such as changing ice cover duration, physical lake structure, phytoplankton dynamics, and lake metabolism. Václava primarily studies lakes in West Greenland and for her LOREX project, she will join Dr. Jan Karlsson and his lab at Umeå University. In Sweden, she plans to build on one of her dissertation chapters in which she quantifies carbon dioxide emissions from lakes in arid landscapes of West Greenland and assess how hydrological connectivity affects the magnitude of atmospheric carbon dioxide fluxes from Arctic lakes by conducting a meta-analysis using new and previously published data.

University of Montreal

Daniel Szydlowski
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Danny is a second-year PhD student in the Freshwater and Marine Sciences program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology. His research focuses on the effects of external disturbance on lake structure and function through factors such as climate and invasive species. Currently, he is researching how storms affect phytoplankton in lakes through tradeoffs between nutrient loading and light limitation. He has found a relationship between the response of phytoplankton to individual storm events and antecedent winter conditions, which may “set the stage” early in the year for what occurs later in the summer. Through the LOREX program, Danny aims to study the effects of winter conditions on organic matter quality, which may ultimately be important in mediating the response of phytoplankton to summer storms. He is very excited to work with Dr. Jean-Francois Lapierre of the University of Montreal on these questions by freezing soils taken from the shorelines of Canadian lakes and investigating what these cold conditions do to organic matter quality, a question that is growing increasingly important in the face of global climate change. Overall, Danny is looking forward to spending time with the limnologists of GRIL and developing new research skills!

Meredith Theus
Cornell University

Meredith is a PhD student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Broadly, she is interested in aquatic ecosystem ecology, conservation, and restoration with a particular interest in connecting biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. Meredith’s research focuses on how plants mediate carbon cycling in freshwater ecosystems and on linking plant biodiversity to greenhouse gas emissions in shallow aquatic systems and wetlands. Through the LOREX program, Meredith will work with Dr. Jean-Francois Lapierre at Université de Montréal to determine the effects of litter quality diversity on dissolved organic matter quantity and quality and greenhouse gas production. She is excited to meet and collaborate with great scientists, and she is excited to learn new techniques that she can bring back with her and share with others!

Université du Québec à Montréal

Emily Martin
University of California, Irvine

Emily is a first year Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), studying freshwater communities within Dr. Celia Symons’ laboratory. Completing her BS at Purdue University in Indiana, she became particularly interested in freshwater systems while researching amphibian disease in Midwest ponds and lampricide resistance in the Great Lakes. Coming to UCI, she is interested in exploring how anthropogenic stressors shape lake ecosystems and how those freshwater systems will respond to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Her dissertation will investigate alpine lake community dynamics within the Eastern Sierra, delving into community function and assembly along spatial and temporal gradients. Through a combination of laboratory and field approaches in the Symons Lab, she will expand her knowledge of freshwater community ecology while collaborating with interdisciplinary groups.

Emily will be working closely with Dr. Alison Derry and her lab at UQAM, applying eDNA metabarcoding to predict the community impacts of intraspecific variation of stickleback fish on aquatic communities in lakes of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska (USA). She will also evaluate aquatic community composition and relative abundances in experimental lakes where stickleback populations were reintroduced. This project will investigate and help predict potential changes in the stickleback and aquatic communities associated with their restorative introductions, progressing understanding about fish transplantations on aquatic communities and how those communities respond across trophic levels.

Overall, Emily is excited to collaborate internationally, learn new techniques on a fascinating project, and expand her professional network through the ASLO LOREX program.

2020 Cohort

Umeå University, Sweden

Climate Impacts Research Centre
Website: https://www.arcticcirc.net

Amanda Curtis
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Amanda is a third-year PhD student in the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her previous research has examined questions around invasive species, climate change, ecotoxicology, and currently she is using environmental DNA (eDNA) as a tool for conservation. Currently, her PhD research focuses on basic methodological questions around in situ detection of eDNA, like the influence of stream flow on detection probability. In addition, she is using eDNA to detect and map the distribution of an imperiled salamander, which will hopefully be useful for directing future conservation actions. For Amanda’s LOREX project, she will be working with Dr. Jonatan Klaminder at Umeå University, to combine paleo-ecotoxicology techniques with novel DNA technology (ancient DNA (aDNA) and eDNA) to assess the effects of multiple stressors (e.g. temperature, mercury (Hg) concentrations) over time in a Swedish lake. By integrating aDNA and eDNA with paleo-ecotoxicology techniques, the work will provide a novel assessment of the effects of environmental change and contaminants on aquatic communities through time. She is very excited to work with Dr. Klaminder’s lab to learn new techniques, to exchange knowledge on Hg and eDNA methodology, and to learn as much as she can from other brilliant scientists. In addition, she looks forward to making new connections with other aquatic scientists, to learn how to build lasting international collaborations, and most importantly to have fun conducting her research!

Jemma Fadum
Colorado State University

Jemma is a second year PhD student at Colorado State University in Dr. Ed Hall’s lab. This summer she will be traveling to Sweden to work with Dr. David Seekell at Umeå University. One aspect of limnology she is particularly interested in is the relationship between climate change and stratification and how that relationship plays out in communities dependent on local lakes. To examine the concept of stratification as a key component of lakes as natural resources, she and Dr. Seekell have proposed a synthesis of between-region and between-lake factors of two study locations, one tropical and one arctic. Though exceptionally different systems, Lake Yojoa, Honduras and the Abisko region of Sweden are both impacted by climate change in terms of warming surface waters and changes in stratification. By critically analyzing these two dissimilar systems they aim to develop a framework for asking questions aimed at the broader social and economic impacts. It is the goal of this research to not only quantitatively examine the relationship between physical-chemical structure of the water column and diminishing fisheries but also to explore the direct and indirect effects of stratification regimes on local communities. Some of the impacts they will explore through this research include job provisioning in rural communities, the equity of reparations to the Sami people under changing fisheries conditions and the reassessment of protected habitat. Jemma is excited for the upcoming challenges and opportunities of international collaboration in an unfamiliar ecosystem. She hopes to, through learning about issues related to climate change in the Artic, come away from this experience with the ability to more critically view her work in the tropics.

Tamara Marcus
University of New Hampshire

Tamara is a graduate student in the Natural Resources and Earth System Sciences Ph.D. program at the University of New Hampshire. Her research interests include using bioinformatic techniques to understand the impact of warming on microbial mediation of carbon emissions from Arctic lakes. Additionally, she studies how indigenous communities access weather and climate data to better understand how to make results from climate research more accessible and applicable to individuals and communities. Using a combination of survey data and storytelling, Tamara works with Sami communities and indigenous Australians to record environmental change observed by the traditional owners of the land. Through this work, she hopes to promote the collaborative development of conservation policy by both scientists and indigenous communities. Previously, Tamara has worked with non-profits and local governments in the Indian Himalaya to translate the results of her research into local environmental policy. Tamara has been a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, a NASA New Hampshire Space Grant fellow, and a National Center for Atmospheric Research fellow and completed her B.S. in biochemistry and English from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Christine Parisek
University of California, Davis

Christine's early work on Coast Range Newts (Taricha torosa) engendered an interest and appreciation for life-history theory and local adaptations to environmental heterogeneity. Over time, and notably through projects at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), she became increasingly focused on high alpine freshwater ecosystems and their potential as models for testing deeper ecological questions. For her MS, Christine investigated the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of aquatic insects in lentic and lotic ecosystems in the northern Sierra Nevada in California, USA. Ultimately, Christine endeavored to advance fisheries conservation and management issues in California’s Sierra Nevada, but also other mountain lake rich portions of the globe.

Christine is currently exploring the abundance, distribution, and food web ecology of California alpine lake ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada. While a global-scale analysis has not been part of her work to date, Christine has growing interests in understanding landscape limnology patterns occurring across scales. During her LOREX exchange, Christine will work closely with David Seekell and Cristian Gudasz from Umeå University in Sweden to evaluate spatial variance in global lake counts. The analysis will also yield valuable information for use in developing similar smaller-scale analyses for California. Finally, Christine aims to make the data products, code, and provenance from her LOREX work completely open such that future researchers may benefit from efforts developed as part of this exchange.

Christine’s other interests include scientific communication, biological illustration, and she is passionate about promoting diversity, inclusivity, and equity in STEM. Her career goal is to advance the fields of limnology, freshwater ecology, and the physical sciences through multifaceted team science collaboration. Locally, Christine aims to understand the understudied California Sierra Nevada lakes and streams and support freshwater ecosystem diversity.

Phoenix Rogers
University of Alabama

Phoenix is a central Wisconsin native, where his love for fishing turned into a passion for better understanding aquatic ecosystems. This motivated Phoenix to attain a B.S. in Biology with an emphasis in Aquatic Science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL). During his time at UWL Phoenix was involved in numerous projects focused on stream systems. He investigated ecosystem-level effects of methylmercury in at-risk rivers, determined the susceptibility of local streams to future climate change using air-water temperature relationships, and measured the temporal variability of whole-stream ecosystem metabolism in a nearby stream. Phoenix is now a PhD student in the Biological Sciences department at the University of Alabama working with Dr. Jon Benstead to research the impacts of warming on forested stream macro invertebrate communities and ecosystem processes they provide. Their research group is artificially warming a forested stream by ~4°C and Pheonix’s role is determining how that impacts invertebrate secondary production, community assemblage, and material flow within the stream. Aquatic macro invertebrates play a crucial role in stream ecosystems, yet little work has investigated their response to future climate change. With the LOREX program, Pheonix will be working with Dr. Ryan Sponseller at Umeå University in Sweden and expanding his dissertation to include macro invertebrate communities in arctic streams. He and his group will be using the vegetation gradient within the Miellajokka catchment of northern Sweden to model the impacts of future climate change. The natural gradient in temperature, light, and productivity represents the expected future climate induced changes. This will be used to characterize patterns in macro invertebrate composition and growth rate of key taxa amongst streams in this catchment, modeling how future climate change will impact these vulnerable arctic ecosystems. Phoenix is eager to start on this project and excited to meet/collaborate with international colleagues!

Dalhousie University, Canada

The Department of Oceanography
Website: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/science/oceanography.html

Kelly Luis
University of Massachusetts Boston

Kelly is a PhD student in the Marine Science and Technology program at the University of Massachusetts – Boston. Her thesis focuses on using ocean color remote sensing sensors for water quality monitoring. For her proposed research project, Kelly will be working with Dr. Paul Hill at Dalhousie University to quantify river discharge from remote sensing platforms. Fluctuating river discharges are associated with climate change and other anthropogenic effects. Systematic measurements of river discharge are necessary for monitoring and managing river systems but gathering such in situ data at fine spatio-temporal scales can be logistically challenging and costly. Publicly available ocean color remote sensing imagery from high spatial resolution satellites can be used to monitor river systems. Thus, the goal of the proposed project is to evaluate remotely sensed proxies for river discharge using the Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 satellites. The project objectives include: 1) compiling in situ and satellite datasets over the Connecticut River Estuary, 2) comparing Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 reflectance in the red wavelengths with river discharge, and 3) comparing Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 river widths to river discharge. The results from this work will help determine the applicability of remotely sensed proxies for river discharge estimation, and it will lay the groundwork for applying these proxies to other river systems.

Catherine (Catrina) Nowakowski
University of Rhode Island

Catrina is a PhD student using stable isotopes as tracers to study how our warming climate changes marine ecosystems through bottom up processes. She is a third-year student studying Biological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography with Dr. Kelton McMahon and will be working with Dr. Owen Sherwood next summer at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Her thesis aims to provide historical context changes in food web regimes, biogeochemical cycling, and export production in the Gulf of Maine as a function of climate using cutting-edge compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) methods.

During her LOREX project at Dalhousie University, Catrina will apply CSIA methods to recently collected deep-sea corals (2017-2020) from the Gulf of Maine to reconstruct long term (fifty year), high resolution (annual) records of changes in export production dynamics since the 1970s. This will entail generating a timeseries of δ15N-based CSIA metrics representing source nitrogen, trophic transfer, and microbial reworking of sinking organic matter recorded in the proteinaceous skeletons of Primnoa resedaeformis corals within the context of the broader Gulf of Maine trophic biology and nitrogen cycling. While in the program, her goals are to expand on analytical skills in dating coral growth rings and analyzing samples for amino acid-specific N isotopes; as well as to develop new collaborations with colleagues interested in paleoceanography. Her research explores the dynamics of large-scale ocean systems that are not constrained by international boarders, and she is excited to work with the ASLO LOREX program to build the necessary bridges across international borders to tackle these global-scale questions.

Rachel Presley
University of Maine

Rachel obtained her BS in Freshwater and Marine Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and her MS in Biology from the University of West Florida. Rachel’s master’s thesis examined the role of nitrogen fixation in subtropical seagrass bed sediments. She is currently working on her PhD in Oceanography at the University of Maine. Her dissertation is focused on understanding how the organic carbon to nitrate ratio, the primary controlling factor on competition between nitrate reduction processes (denitrification, anaerobic ammonium oxidation—anammox—, and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium—DNRA), affects the dominance of nitrate reduction process in the anaerobic layer of marine sediment. She conducts experiments that have sediment thin discs placed into a flow-through reactor, which acts as a chemostat, to address this problem. Rachel’s dissertation also looks at the microbial assemblages in the anaerobic, nitrate-reducing sediment layer. Additionally, she is studying nitrogen cycling dynamics in Maine’s coastal sediments in areas that experience anthropogenic impacts and unimpacted areas.

During the LOREX program, Rachel will be using data from her thin disc experiments, which aim to determine whether there are distinct tipping points along a range of organic carbon to nitrate ratios at which dominance between the three nitrate reducing processes switches as suggested by a modeling study by Algar and Vallino (2014). At Dalhousie University, she will be working with Dr. Chris Algar to develop and build inverse models to interpret these results. The model will be fit to the measured inorganic nitrogen species using denitrification and DNRA rates as parameters. This modeling exercise will allow her to determine if the energy yield and thermodynamic favorability of a reaction is or is not more important than biology and organism specific properties in determining the partitioning between nitrate reduction processes. In addition to accomplishing these research-specific goals, Rachel hopes to expand her professional network outside of the United States and establish relationships with other researchers, who she could potentially collaborate with in the future.

Interuniversity Group in Limnology (GRIL)

Montréal, Québec, Canada
Website: http://www.gril-limnologie.ca/

Lara Jansen
Portland State University

Lara is a PhD student at Portland State University in her second year, studying the abiotic factors, such as phosphorus levels, and biotic factors, such as non-native fish, influencing cyanobacteria blooms in high-elevation lakes. She has over seven years of research experience in aquatic systems from studying pH regulation mechanisms in leopard sharks to nutrient cycling in subtropical wetlands. Lara completed her BS in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution at University of California, San Diego and Masters in Natural Resources at Humboldt State University. Over time in her research work, Lara has become increasingly fascinated by how the environment shapes community structure and function, ultimately influencing ecosystem processes like primary productivity. Through the LOREX program, she will work with Dr. Jesse Shapiro’s lab on high throughput sequencing to identify cyanobacteria at the strain level, which is crucial as toxin-production and bloom formation varies within a genus, in mountain lakes across elevational (as a proxy for temperature) and phosphorus gradients. Based upon previous studies, she expects bloom-forming and toxic strains to be more prevalent at the relatively higher temperatures and phosphorus concentrations. This collaborative project fits within a larger international study led by Dr. Shapiro, DNA sequencing cyanobacteria from many North American lakes. Lara seeks to understand how to effectively carry out a genomics project from planning to sequencing data processing. In addition, she hopes to network with the larger limnology community at GRIL -University of Montreal and learn about other unique research like the Large Experimental Array of Ponds. Ultimately, Lara is excited to lead a collaborative study, building relationships to explore new avenues of study with a combined knowledge base.

Carrie Ann Sharitt
Miami University

Carrie Ann is a second-year graduate student at Miami University (Ohio). Growing up, she spent lots of time outdoors exploring local beaches and swamps as well as camping with her family. In undergrad, Carrie Ann majored in Biology and Secondary Education which allowed her to pursue ecology interests and also share her passions with others. Afterwards, she spent four years teaching middle and high school science in Atlanta, GA. In her free time, Carrie Ann enjoys working puzzles, reading, and a variety of crafts including photography and coloring. She also loves traveling and is currently planning a solo trip to Tanzania to visit Gombe National Park.

In terms of research, Carrie Ann is broadly interested in the role consumers play in nutrient cycling as they release nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus largely through excretion and egestion. Factors such temperature and population biomass are known to impact the overall amount of nutrients released from aquatic consumers. However, little is known about how parasites impact nutrient excretion from aquatic consumers; yet, parasites will increase in abundance and intensity under many climate change models. Through the LOREX program, Carrie Ann aims to better understand the synergistic influence of climate warming and parasite burden on animal excretion. Working with GRIL researchers at Station de Biologie des Laurentides, pumpkinseed fish will be exposed to temperatures increases as well as various trematode infection burdens. After allowing the fish to acclimate for several weeks, nutrient excretion will be measured across treatments. A subsample of fish will also be used to understand how warming temperatures and parasites alter stoichiometry of fish body tissues. It is anticipated that nutrient excretion will increase with elevated parasite burden and higher temperatures.

Southern Cross University, Australia

National Marine Science Centre at Coffs Harbor
Website: https://www.scu.edu.au/national-marine-science-centre/

Amy Moody
University of Southern Mississippi

Amy is a third year PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi studying the impacts of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) on the Mississippi Sound. SGD is the combined flow of freshwater from aquifers and the circulation of seawater through sediments that occurs along the coastline and across the continental shelf. It is an important, yet often overlooked, part of global nutrient, trace metal, and carbon inputs to the ocean. SGD can greatly affect the water quality of coastal environments, especially in areas that are already vulnerable to eutrophication (excess nutrients) and hypoxia (low oxygen). Intermittently Closed and Open Lakes or Lagoons (ICOLLs), also known as coastal lagoons or estuaries in some regions, are common ecosystems along the world’s shorelines and often experience hypoxia. Previous work done along the coast of Australia has indicated that groundwater may be up to 90% of water input to ICOLLs. Amy will build on this work by assessing whether SGD drives widespread hypoxia in ICOLLs. Radon, radium, nutrients, nutrient/water isotopes, and physical parameters within four ICOLLs will be determined to understand the effects of SGD on the water quality. These are highly sensitive estuarine environments, and understanding the fluxes that affect water quality will be useful in protecting and maintaining them. This study will highlight the importance of SGD in the coastal ocean and elucidate the link between SGD and hypoxia. This program will also help foster an international professional and academic network outside of the United States, which is vital to solving global water crises and pollution issues. Groundwater discharge and potential contamination needs more attention, especially considering the majority of freshwater utilized in the world by humanity is groundwater. Amy is looking forward to expanding her knowledge of the groundwater system outside local regions as an important part of her career path.

Stephanie J. Wilson
Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Stephanie is currently a Ph.D. student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. She is interested in marine biogeochemistry and specifically nutrient cycling in coastal ecosystems. Nitrogen is an important limiting nutrient for primary production in marine ecosystems. Her current research focuses on the sources, fates, and cycling of nitrogen in a subterranean estuary (STE) in Virginia, USA. STEs form at the coastline where groundwater is advected and mixes with overlying seawater. STEs may act as either sources or sinks of nitrogen to overlying seawater. Stephanie’s LOREX project will focus on the question: are subterranean estuaries a source or sink of nitrogen to the coastal ocean? To address this question, data compiled from STE’s around the world will be used to complete a meta-analysis of nitrogen in STEs. The STEs will be grouped by features such as sediment type and location before examining nitrogen concentrations along salinity gradients to determine source or sink behavior. The outcomes of this project have important implications regarding the cycling of groundwater nitrogen as it is discharged through STEs to the global ocean. Stephanie will be collaborating with Dr. Isaac Santos at Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbor to complete this work. As a part of the LOREX program, she looks forward to learning more about international collaboration, creating new connections with other program participants as well as colleagues at the host institution, and developing new research skills and techniques.

Southern Cross University, Australia

Southern Cross University at Lismore
Website: https://www.scu.edu.au/research-centres/centre-for-coastal-biogeochemistry

Alia N. Al-Haj
Boston University

Alia is a 3rd year Ph.D. student at Boston University studying coastal biogeochemistry in Dr. Robinson “Wally” Fulweiler’s lab. Her dissertation focuses on methane cycling in seagrass meadows. Methane has a global warming potential 34x that of carbon dioxide on a 100-year time scale. Seagrasses play an important role in the marine carbon cycle, with a hectare burying 10x more carbon than terrestrial forests. However, there is little information on carbon lost from seagrasses via methane emissions. This information is critical when assessing the net benefit of seagrass ecosystems as a greenhouse gas sink. The few studies that have quantified diffusive methane fluxes from seagrasses report that these ecosystems are methane sources. While there are a small number of studies on diffusive air-sea emissions of methane from seagrasses, to date there is little understanding of methane transport pathways in seagrass ecosystems. Alia will be working with Dr. Damien Maher at Southern Cross University on quantifying methane transport pathways in seagrass meadows. Her goals for her time in the LOREX program include (1) determining the dominant physical pathway for methane transport to the atmosphere in seagrass meadows, (2) determining the dominant mechanism for methanogenesis and methanotrophy in seagrass dominated sediments using isotopic analyses, and (3) developing a methane budget for a subtropical basin. Their results will help determine a more accurate carbon storage capacity of seagrass meadows.

Kalina C. Grabb
MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Kalina has always had a strong passion for the ocean and she feels lucky to be able to combine her background in earth science and environmental engineering with her interests in oceanography. She has been able to explore this passion as a 3rd year Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MIT/WHOI) Joint Program, in the department of chemical oceanography. Her Ph.D. focuses on reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are short-lived oxygen-containing molecules that play essential roles in the health and biogeochemistry of the ocean. Traditionally ROS production is attributed to stress within organisms, however, evidence is mounting that extracellular ROS is beneficial for organisms, including corals. Most of Kalina’s thesis is focused on the ROS dynamics associated with corals in order to better understand coral health. In order to characterize the production and decay mechanisms of ROS associated with coral, it is essential to investigate the reactions of ROS with other substances (i.e. metals and minerals) present within the environment. The LOREX program presents an opportunity for Kalina to collaborate with Dr. Andrew Rose at Southern Cross University in order to complete the first systematic study that directly explores the reaction between one specific ROS, superoxide, and Fe(III)-bearing minerals. The goal of this project is to identify other potential sources and sinks of ROS. Through this, we can better understand how superoxide alters the redox environment and interacts with the iron redox cycle within Fe(III)-bearing minerals. This study will characterize the impact of ROS on redox conditions within the environment and places Kalina’s Ph.D. thesis research in larger context by providing an insight to the links between ROS and other biogeochemical cycles. Overall, this opportunity will provide Kalina with the opportunity to establish an international collaboration between two of the leading labs in ROS and minerology.

Josué G. Millán
Indiana State University

Josué is a Ph.D. student from Puerto Rico at Indiana State University pursuing a degree in Spatial and Earth Sciences. His research focus is in Earth evolution, the intersection of geology and biology and the complex interactions between life and the environment. He is specifically interested in understanding the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 and the oceanic geochemical cycling of carbon. Phytoplankton forms the bases of the marine food web and plays an essential role in the oceans Carbon pump. The nature of primary productivity and phytoplankton dynamics is crucial for the management of our natural resources as well to understand what role they will play in modern climate variability. The results of his LOREX project intent to be used to validate existing biogeochemical models and provide better parameters for new ones to understand atmospheric-oceanic systems.

Since the beginning of his academic life, Josué’s goal was to become part of the nationally constant influx of Latinos in STEM that contributes and promotes a tidal wave of knowledge and positive change to our society. The current role of a scientist in society is changing and expanding. Josué has realized that his generation has the responsibility to reestablish the leading role the scientific community had in guiding our nation. Through his journey, Josué has learned that he is passionate about interdisciplinary research that brings together different scientific disciplines. The understanding of life on our planet and beyond is something that he finds amazing and stunning, with a central emphasis on the interconnections of biogeochemistry, molecular biology, and environmental processes. Hence, his research aspirations are defined by time: past, present, and future. For that reason, Josué’s research interest includes understanding the origins of life and speciation, examining the response of ecosystems to current environmental change, and the feasibility of life beyond our planet. Recently, Josué has integrated scientific advocacy to his aspirations due to the importance it brings to do science with courage and determination.

Inter University Institute for Marine Science in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, Israel
Website: http://www.iui-eilat.ac.i

Ben Martin
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ben is currently a PhD student in the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where his thesis focuses on disturbances in aquatic food webs including the invasion of Spiny Water Flea to inland Wisconsin lakes and the decline in Great Lakes Cisco community. Much of Ben’s research incorporates geometric morphometric techniques to understand ecomorphology in fishes as well as stable isotope analysis to understand food web relationships. Ben is especially interested in applied ecological questions with an eco-evolutionary twist. Through ASLO LOREX, Ben will be studying the body morphology of Rabbitfish in both their native range of the Red Sea and their invaded range of the Mediterranean Sea. Further, using the extensive fish preserved fish collection at the Tel Aviv Zoological Museum, Ben will quantify Rabbitfish morphology changes throughout their ~60 years of invasion. Ben notes that while ecological invasions are damaging, he enjoys studying them as they are a unique opportunity to study evolution at a reasonable timescale. Ben is excited for the opportunity to apply similar techniques and ecological theory as his thesis to a vastly different ecosystem than he has previously worked in. Additionally, he looks forward to experiencing international collaboration and the student cohort community in the LOREX program.

Mallory Ringham
MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Mallory is a PhD candidate in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Chemical Engineering, where she works on methods to study the marine carbon cycle in coastal oceans. Her thesis focuses on the development of an autonomous dissolved inorganic carbon sensor which will be deployed in an experiment to study inorganic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitation in the Red Sea, as well as from a remotely operated vehicle at sea to study carbonate chemistry across deep coral reefs on the West Florida shelf. Mallory holds a Masters in Earth Sciences focused on development of the carbonate clumped isotope paleothermometer in desert soils, and a Bachelors in Physics and Chemical Engineering from Syracuse University. When she is not in the lab, she can be found roaming around Cape Cod, running, biking, and gardening as much as possible. 

A fundamental pathway in the marine carbon cycle is the biological precipitation of calcium carbonate as shells and skeletons. Inorganic CaCO3 precipitation is generally assumed to be insignificant in marine carbon cycling, but laboratory experiments and observations in certain settings, like in the Little Bahama Banks, have shown that inorganic CaCO3 precipitation may occur on suspended sediments, which can enter coastal waters through floods, rivers, dust, and resuspension events. The goal of this project is to evaluate the significance of this type of CaCO3 precipitation in the Red Sea at Eilat, Israel, where warm water temperatures, high CaCO3 supersaturation, and large particle loads from the surrounding desert may trigger inorganic CaCO3 precipitation. At IUI, she will work on a coastal mesocosm experiment from which bottle samples and in-situ chemical sensors measurements (including pH, pCO2, and a newly developed dissolved inorganic carbon sensor from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) will allow us to track high resolution carbonate precipitation during simulated flood and airborne dust deposition events.

University of Haifa, Israel

The Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, Haifa
Website: http://marsci.haifa.ac.il/index.php/en/

Jessica Hillhouse
Texas A&M University at Galveston

Jessica started working in a phytoplankton physiology lab after she received her Bachelor’s degree in 2015. Most of the research she has been involved in up until this point has focused on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 and the effects it had on the microbial community. She has recently decided to go back to school for her master’s degree in Marine Biology. Although her background is in oil spill research, she decided to change direction a little bit for her Master’s project. Her thesis project, done through the LOREX program at the University of Haifa in Israel, will be investigating the physiological responses of coastal phytoplankton species when exposed to the brine effluent released from desalination plants. In addition, she is interested to see if changes in water quality caused by a these plants affect coastal phytoplankton communities in such a way that would negatively affect the plant itself. Desalination plants help to supplement freshwater where traditional resources can no longer sustain a population or a region. It is expected that the amount of desalination plants will increase globally as population continues to grow. As desalination plants become necessary in new locations around the world, the observations from this experiment could help predict potential changes to the affected coastal phytoplankton communities. Her goals for the LOREX program are to gain a better understanding of phytoplankton communities affected by desalination plants, and to contribute to a relatively sparse body of knowledge that is bound to become increasingly relevant as the world’s population continues to grow, and water shortages become a more common problem.

Hunter Hughes
University of Maryland

Hunter is Master’s student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. His thesis revolves around how coral skeletal geochemistry is used to reconstruct past ocean conditions. Sometimes referred to as ‘The Tree Rings of the Ocean’, corals produce seasonal growth bands in their skeletons. If paleo-oceanographers measure particular geochemical proxies in those growth bands, such as skeletal strontium-to-calcium ratios (Sr/Ca), they can reconstruct past ocean temperatures and better inform models that seek to predict future changes in climate. Specifically, Hunter looks at variability in seawater Sr/Ca ratios to see how small changes in local seawater chemistry can make large impacts on coral Sr/Ca-based temperature reconstructions. Through the ASLO LOREX program, Hunter will be working with Dr. Tali Mass in Haifa, Israel. There he will measure seawater Sr/Ca ratios in the Red Sea to better inform coral paleoclimate studies about the potential mechanisms and drivers for seawater Sr/Ca variability.

Prior to his master’s program, Hunter took what is commonly called a ‘non-traditional’ path to the sciences. After receiving a B.A. from Emerson College in English and Journalism, Hunter went on to work in the sales industry for two years. In the Spring of 2014, he returned to school to complete a variety of math and science courses with the goal of being admitted into a master’s program for paleoclimatology. He spent a year working as a research technician on a remote marine field station before gaining acceptance into the Marnie-Estuarine Environmental Program through the University of Maryland. He has presented this research at multiple conferences and looks forward to continuing his studies of paleoclimatology by obtaining a doctorate in Oceanography. Outside of his research, Hunter is passionate about outreach, science communication, and creative outlets for both individual and shared expression.

Alanna Mnich
University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

Alanna is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology, where she studies the interdisciplinary connection between biogeochemistry and fisheries. Before beginning her PhD studies, Alanna graduated from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in 2017 with majors in biology and marine science and minors in chemistry and psychology. Her undergraduate thesis research focused on identification and distribution patterns of larval cephalopods of the Eastern Caribbean during an anomalous freshwater plume year. After completing her degree, Alanna went on to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where she participated in research projects studying the early life history of Atlantic bluefin tuna. For her thesis work, Alanna hopes to use her background in bluefin as well as her interest in biogeochemistry to build a project utilizing signatures in seawater that can be applied to better understand life history strategies and food web dynamics. Her LOREX project will serve to achieve that goal. Alanna will be working as part of a larger study with goals to measure taxa-specific variability and the various phytoplankton C:N:P ratios in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea with regards to natural and manipulated difference in N:P supply ratio, and to determine which phytoplankton taxa of that area are the dominant drivers of local carbon export. She will be primarily focused on the manipulations of the study in the form of mesocosm experiments. This specific aspect of the project will show stoichiometric ratios of nitrogen and phosphorous in Eastern Mediterranean phytoplankton as they are subjected to varying environmental conditions.

Amanda Williams
Rutgers University

Amanda is from New Jersey and obtained a BA in chemistry. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Biochemistry and Microbiology Department at Rutgers in the lab of Dr. Debashish Bhattacharya. For her thesis, Amanda is taking a multi-omics (metabolomic, metagenomic, metatranscriptomic, proteomic) approach in understanding coral health to aid conservation. The main goal of her work will be to identify metabolic activity linked to various forms of stress, in addition to adaptation responses, throughout the holobiont. In order to achieve this, she is currently working on identifying novel coral metabolites and their perspective gene clusters in Montipora capitata. This is the work Amanda will be continuing at the University of Haifa with Dr. Tali Mass. During her LOREX project, Amanda will be growing various coral species in the Red Sea and Mediterranean under multiple stressors (high radiation, high acidity, and elevated temperatures) to determine the metabolic response of the holobiont to future coral ecosystem conditions. Unfortunately, 25% of coral reefs are already considered damaged beyond repair because of human ignorance. It will take more than one field to correct the effect humans have had on the coral holobiont. Therefore, Amanda is also taking part in a fellowship at Rutgers designed to help communicate science by educating fellows to combine scientific knowledge with the economic, engineering, political, and outreach expertise to reverse climate change. Amanda hopes that the LOREX program can assist her in learning how to communicate and educate others on scientific or conservation issues.

2019 Cohort

Umeå University, Sweden

Climate Impacts Research Centre
Website: https://www.arcticcirc.net
Contact person: Dr. David Seekell, [email protected]

Hannah Beck
Louisiana State University

Hannah Beck is a second-year PhD student in the Oceanography and Coastal Sciences program at Louisiana State University. Her research focuses on hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico, where she is investigating the role of sediment biogeochemistry and dissolved inorganic carbon flux in this highly seasonal environment.

Hannah travelled to Abisko, Sweden where she worked closely with Dr. Jenny Ask of Umeå University. There, she investigated the same research question—what is the role of sediment DIC flux in this highly seasonal environment?—under completely opposite conditions. While the Gulf is subtropical, marine, and highly impacted by humans, the small lakes around Abisko are subarctic, fresh, and minimally impacted. She adapted the sediment core incubation technique from her doctoral research to accommodate the lower temperatures and higher productivity of Abisko’s lakes in order to compare and contrast the two locations, especially within the context of a changing global climate.

Hannah is extremely thankful for all aspects of the LOREX program including the meaningful international relationships she built. She is more passionate about science communication, travel, and the value of collaboration. Hannah looks forward to applying every lesson she learned to the rest of her career as an aquatic scientist.

Sarah H Burnet
University of Idaho

Sarah Burnet is pursuing her PhD in Fish and Wildlife Sciences at the University of Idaho, where she also completed a MS in the spring of 2016, both advised by Dr. Frank Wilhelm. Her PhD research is focused on internal loading of phosphorus to reservoirs. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the relationships between sediment type, particle size, and metalimnetic entrainment as sources of phosphorus linked to occurrences of algae blooms. This builds on her MS research which focused on measuring the seasonal internal phosphorus loads as part of a mass balance for Willow Creek Reservoir in Oregon. Working with Dr. Jan Karlsson from Umeå University, Sarah collected sediment cores from seven lakes around Abisko, Sweden to determine if phosphorus release and organic matter varied between lakes. In addition to her dissertation work, Sarah currently serves as the Co-chair of the Ethics Committee for the North American Lake Management Society and previously served as the Student Director and Chair of Student Programs. Sarah’s previous work experience includes sampling and analysis on all five Great Lakes with Cornell University as well as collecting data and samples following the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill.

Sierra E Cagle
Texas A&M University

Sierra is a plankton ecologist who recently completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M University and started as a postdoctoral research associate in the Marine Biology Department of Texas A&M University Galveston. She is broadly interested in investigating ecological theory and mechanisms that shape lower aquatic food webs using empirical, experimental, and numerical approaches. Her dissertation research focused on how the interaction between environmental conditions, such as N:P stoichiometry, and mixotrophic life history characteristics of harmful algae species may influence their population dynamics. Through ASLO’s LOREX program she was able to expand these research interests in new directions via international collaboration with Dr. Sebastian Diehl at Sweden’s Umea University. The objective of this ongoing partnership is to explore how Northern lake brownification may impact the planktonic food web and the role different mixotrophic life history strategies may play in the resulting community structure using a mechanistic numerical model. In her current position Sierra will primarily work to refine the biological component of a pre-existing biophysical model. This model will ultimately be used as a resource management tool to better predict how algal biomass and dissolved oxygen will respond to altered freshwater inflows and nutrient loading in Texas bay systems.

Nicholas A. Castillo
Florida International University

Nick Castillo is a fish ecologist and ecotoxicologist currently completing his PhD at Florida International University. His dissertation research project examines the potential impacts of contaminants and pharmaceuticals on the bonefish decline in South Florida. By comparing bonefish sampled throughout South Florida with bonefish from other Caribbean basins including the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Belize the research aims to identify the present levels of contaminants and assess the relative risk in South Florida compared to bonefish elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Nick completed his LOREX sponsored research at Umeå University with Dr. Jerker Fick. Nick completed three distinct behavioral ecotoxicological experiments. The first experiment used guppies selected for either large or small brain sizes and observed any changes in their reproductive behavior in response to exposure with EE2, a synthetic hormone commonly used in contraceptives. He also examined reproductive behavior with an emphasis on time spent with males or females by exposed guppies or unexposed guppies. The third experiment focused on the effects of exposure to the Benzodiazepine Temazepam on foraging and anti-predator behaviors in dragonfly nymphs. Participation in the ASLO LOREX program far exceeded expectations and provided Nick with numerous experiences that would have otherwise been unavailable.

Holly Embke
University of Wisconsin - Madison

Holly is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison Center for Limnology in Jake Vander Zanden’s lab. Holly’s research focuses on understanding the conditions necessary to support self-sustaining inland recreational fisheries in the face of global environmental change.

In summer 2019, Holly traveled to Umeä University, Sweden to collaborate with Dr. Pär Byström and Dr. David Seekell to quantify the effects of factors associated with light availability on fish biomass production. Holly sampled 16 lakes in northern boreal Sweden, which had been historically visited, conducting gill net and limnological sampling. These samples are now being processed and the information will be used to quantify spatial and temporal changes in fish productivity relative to abiotic drivers over the past 20 years. Additionally, Holly hopes to use comparable information for Wisconsin fish populations to explore these relationships across varying landscapes.

Holly is very grateful for the opportunity to gain international collaboration experience through the ASLO LOREX program as it has taught her countless lessons regarding how to be a better researcher and collaborator. Although the field component of her LOREX program has been completed, she is enthusiastic to continue the collaboration process in the next steps of her project.

Allison Herreid
University of New Hampshire

Allison is a first year PhD student at the University of New Hampshire in Dr. Bill McDowell's lab. She recently finished her Masters with Dr. McDowell which focused on developing an understanding of controls on stream greenhouse gas concentrations across a land use gradient. Allison is broadly interested in biogeochemical cycling in freshwater ecosystems and studying how climate and land use changes will impact biogeochemical cycles and overall ecosystem function.

During her LOREX exchange, Allison worked in Abisko, Sweden with Dr. Ryan Sponseller from Umeå University as well as Drs. Anna Lupon and Eugènia Martí from the Center of Advanced Studies of Blanes (Spain). They assessed the influence of varying carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) availability on stream nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas (GHG) dynamics in two streams draining catchments with tundra and birch forest near Abisko, Sweden that had contrasting light, thermal, and background nutrient regimes. From these additions, they will determine nutrient uptake metrics and use those along with ancillary measures to assess the response of GHG production to manipulated C and N availability. These experiments provide insight into how varying stoichiometry of organic C and dissolved inorganic N influences GHG production from N cycling pathways and other metabolic processes, such as heterotrophic respiration or methanogenesis

Chelsea Hintz
University of Cincinnati

Chelsea is pursuing her PhD in Biology at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH. For Chelsea’s LOREX project, she worked with Ryan Sponseller (Umeå University) and examined diel nutrient patterns in streams across different arctic landscapes and evaluated patterns of nutrient limitation in benthic biofilms. Chelsea worked at the Climate Impacts Research Station in Abisko, Sweden for the duration of her LOREX project.

Her dissertation research is focusing on urban stream ecology and her current project is focusing on the impact that long culverts (or pipes) have on various aspects of the stream ecosystem including benthic algae, macroinvertebrates, and oxygen dynamics. Before pursuing her PhD, Chelsea received her B.S. from Ohio State University in 2012 and then worked as a Research Assistant at the Aquatic Ecology Lab at Ohio State University where she worked on projects related to fisheries research on inland lakes and reservoirs.

Marina Lauck
Arizona State University

Marina is interested in understanding how hydrologic variability and disturbance regimes affect the structure and function of primary producer communities in arid streams and wetlands. Using a combination of field observations from Sycamore Creek and the Salt River wetlands, greenhouse experiments, and statistical modelling, she hopes to better understand how variability within and between years affects long-term biotic community structure and ecosystem function. Marina received her master’s in Ecology at Florida State University, where she studied interactions between algal crusts, plant communities, and storm disturbance regimes on barrier islands coastal dunes in the Florida panhandle.

Carly Rae Olson
University of Notre Dame

Carly is a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN advised by Dr. Stuart Jones. Broadly, she is interested in the relationship between lake catchment characteristics and lake ecosystem structure and function, and how this relationship may further our understanding of the contribution of lake ecosystems to biogeochemical cycles. Specifically, her current research focuses on land use and hydrologic residence time as controls on nutrient input and processing, and how these two catchment properties interact to dictate coupled cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. She is also part of an ongoing whole-lake manipulation investigating the response of lake food web productivity to increased terrestrial dissolved organic matter. Her LOREX-enabled collaboration with Dr. Cristian Gudasz explored the mechanisms involved in lake carbon burial in both temperate and arctic ecosystems. They developed a dynamic process model to understand the role of catchment land use and lake morphometry in mediating carbon burial rates. This will help further our process level understanding of the mechanisms responsible for lake carbon burial and can be used to inform predictions about how the sequestration of carbon by lake ecosystems may change in the future.

Stephanie Owens
San Francisco State University

Stephanie participated in the LOREX program during the summer of 2019, during which she conducted research at the Climate Impacts Research Center, associated with Umeå University, in Abisko, Sweden. Stephanie completed her master of science in biology with a concentration in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology through San Francisco State University prior to participating in the LOREX program. Her master’s research investigated copepod growth grates as a measure of productivity and its relation to aquatic food webs in the San Francisco Estuary. Her LOREX research built upon the methods she developed for her master’s research. Stephanie collaborated with Danny Lau and Jan Karlsson to investigate growth rates of the calanoid copepod Eudiaptomus graciloides in permafrost thaw ponds in Stordalen Mire, Sweden in relation to nutrients and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to better understand how increased DOC will affect lower food web productivity. During her summer in northern Sweden Stephanie conducted 10 growth rate experiments within three different water bodies in Stordalen Mire. In concurrence with growth rate experiments Stephanie collected water samples for nutrients and DOC that were processed by Danny Lau. Copepod growth rates were measured through an image analysis technique and related to DOC. Copepod growth rates were negatively related to DOC, implying that lower food web dynamics may be negatively affected by climate change, which is increasing DOC at higher latitudes.

Breena S Riley
Tarleton State University

Breena is a second-year graduate student at Tarleton State University in Dr. Victoria Chraibi’s lab. She is currently working on a project that characterizes diatoms in a river in central Texas. It relates diatom assemblages to bottomland woody vegetation along the river.

In 2019 she collaborated with Dr. David Seekell of Umeå University to characterize freshwater diatoms in the Abisko, Sweden, region. The study was foundational in nature due to the lack of similar studies from the past around Abisko. Previous work with diatoms in the region was limited to annual sampling for environmental monitoring purposes. Field sites were selected to represent altitudinal and environmental gradients found near Abisko, located in either birch forest or tundra ecosystems. In addition to the primary characterization study, she worked with LOREX peer Chelsea Hintz to assess diatom growth as part of a nutrient diffusion study. Breena hopes that her work will help future investigators better understand freshwater biological systems in northern Sweden and possibly lay the groundwork for understanding diatoms in the context of climate change.

Dalhousie University, Canada

The Department of Oceanography
Website: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/science/oceanography.html
Contact person: ***

Emily Chua
Boston University

Emily is a Ph.D. student in the Earth & Environment department at Boston University. Her research centers on improving our understanding of biogeochemical cycling in the coastal ocean by studying an often overlooked component: the sandy sediments blanketing the seafloor. To do so, she is developing a sampling instrument, based on a mass spectrometer, which can measure the concentrations of major gases dissolved in the sediment porewater.

For her LOREX project, Emily travelled to Canada to work with three research groups at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is also her hometown!). There, she conducted lab experiments with her prototype instrument, and also tested it out during a one-day field deployment in Halifax Harbour. This experience enabled Emily to identify and implement improvements to the prototype, and gain ideas for future biogeochemical experiments.

Aside from her graduate studies, Emily has numerous interests. She is a writer and editor for Oceanbites, an ocean science blog. She is also an analyst for Boston University’s fledging technology transfer program. When not engaged in scholarly pursuits, Emily can be found running around Boston or at the local boxing gym

Eilea Knotts
University of South Carolina

Eilea was a 5th year graduate student working toward her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina in Dr. Pinckney’s lab. Her research focused on marine phytoplankton and estuarine ecology, specifically, the competitive advantages of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase (CA) in phytoplankton. Given the well-documented role of phytoplankton in food web dynamics and benthic microalgae in the trophodynamics of estuaries, understanding the mechanisms of carbon acquisition in these systems is important in predicting how primary productivity and nutrient cycling might change in response to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO₂.

For Eilea’s LOREX project, she worked on gathering data on the elemental stoichiometry and macromolecular content for two diatoms that either had active or inhibited CA activity. These analyses would be used to parameterize a model examining impacts of a changing carbonate system on estuarine phytoplankton communities. However, complications arose with maintaining diatom growth. The project shifted to focus on simple diffusion models investigating why the Skeletonema sp. underwent mass mortality without active CA and the Cylindrotheca sp. continued to grow. Eilea learned that you must always have a contingency plan in place in the event that the experiment is no longer feasible.

Jeffrey Nielson
Washington State University Vancouver

Jeff is a PhD student at Washington State University Vancouver studying environmental hydrodynamics. He studies mixing in stratified waters, in hopes of improving the scientific community’s understanding of the transport of heat, chemicals, nutrients, pollutants, organisms, and sediments, which he sees as an important step in addressing water quality issues in lakes, estuaries, and oceans. As part of the LOREX cohort-1, he collaborated with Drs. Dan Kelley (Dalhousie University) and Clark Richards (Bedford Institute of Oceanography) in Nova Scotia, to answer questions about the characteristics of upslope-propagating internal waves and their influence on transport and mixing. Through his LOREX experience, Jeff made substantive progress towards answering his research questions, developed new technical skills for data analysis, gained more knowledge in his area of expertise, expanded his professional network, and established an ongoing international research collaboration.

Wiley Wolfe
Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Wiley is a third-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in marine chemistry and geochemistry working with Dr. Todd Martz at the Scripps institution of Oceanography. His bachelor’s degree is in chemical engineering. Wiley’s PhD thesis will focus on the seawater carbonate chemistry off of the Southern California coast and how it has changed over the last 30 years as well as some ongoing sensor development occurring in the Martz lab.

While at Dalhousie, Wiley worked with Dr. Doug Wallace’s group to incorporate a pH sensor developed in California into the SeaCycler. The SeaCycler an autonomous motorized mooring that allows for daily profiles of the upper ocean for a yearlong deployment. The measurements of the seawater carbonate system made by the SeaCycler will help to reduce uncertainty in global carbon budgets by better constraining the flux of CO2 sinking into the deep ocean through the formation of North Atlantic deep water.

Matthew Woodstock
Florida International University

Matt is a second-year Ph.D. student at Florida International University in the biological sciences department. His work focuses on developing ecosystem models to assess the status of marine resources and the impact of human-caused stressors in dynamic simulations. Matt's work in centered in the oceanic Gulf of Mexico where he is examining possible shifts in the trophic structure of the ecosystem since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He hopes to develop new methods to quantify uncertainty in ecosystem models and optimize model development towards future management decisions. Previously, Matt earned a Bachelors degree from Beloit College and a Masters degree in Marine Biology from Nova Southeastern University. At Nova Southeastern, Matt examined the gut contents and parasites of mesopelagic fishes in the Gulf of Mexico. Investigating the role of mesopelagic fishes in oceanic ecosystems remains a primary goal of Matt's work.

During the LOREX program, Matt traveled to Dalhousie University to work with Katja Fennel. He developed an ecosystem model for the oceanic Gulf of Mexico that couples with a biogeochemical model previously developed by Fennel's group. Combined these models simulate the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem from primary producers to apex predators. Beyond the productive six weeks in the lab, Matt is grateful for the LOREX program and the experience he had in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He believes that developing international collaborations is a valuable skill that will remain prominent throughout his career.

Southern Cross University, Australia

National Marine Science Centre at Coffs Harbor
Website: https://www.scu.edu.au/national-marine-science-centre/
Contact person: ***

Tristan McKenzie
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Trista is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and holds undergraduate and master's degrees in Geology and Geophysics from the same institution. Their research interests broadly include using field-based and chemical approaches, in addition to using machine learning and big data approaches, to study coastal hydrology and groundwater contamination. Their current research primarily focuses on groundwater contamination through the use and development of geochemical tracer techniques and sea level rise impacts to coastal wastewater infrastructure.

During the LOREX program, Trista worked with Professor Isaac Santos at the National Marine Science Centre at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour, Australia. Trista’s project looked at submarine groundwater discharge to Sydney Harbour as a source of wastewater. This was a field-based project that was achieved by sampling both groundwater and surface water for radium, pharmaceuticals, nutrients, and dissolved organic carbon along transects. Radium and pharmaceuticals were used as tracers for groundwater and wastewater, respectively. Trista also was awarded a graduate student research grant with outstanding mention from the Geological Society of America (GSA) to support this research.

Southern Cross University, Australia

Southern Cross University at Lismore
Website: https://www.scu.edu.au/research-centres/centre-for-coastal-biogeochemistry/
Contact person: ***

Hannah Glover
University of Washington

Hannah is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington School of Oceanography. She merged her love of sailing, geology, engineering, travel, and getting muddy into a career in marine geology. Specifically, she studies the sediment dynamics of coastal regions where rivers meet the ocean. This interdisciplinary field combines in-situ observations and numerical modeling of sediment transport and hydrodynamics to connect meter-scale processes to 100-kilometer-scale geomorphology and tidal processes to decadal change. Hannah is a member of the UW Sediment Dynamics Group, which focuses on the response of vulnerable coastal regions to human alteration (e.g. damming and deforestation) in diverse regions around the world.

Hannah’s recently published Masters work examined the impact of the Elwha River, WA dam removal on coastal sediment transport and ecosystem habitability. Hannah’s PhD is focused on the impact of mangrove-forest removal on coastal stability. She is working in the Ayeyarwady River Delta, Myanmar comparing sediment retention over tidal to annual timescales in a mangrove preserve and an agricultural field. Through the LOREX program she also worked in Tauranga Harbor, New Zealand with collaborators at the University of Waikato and Southern Cross University, Australia. Mangroves were removed from the harbor >10 years ago, and there is now an opportunity to examine decadal-scale changes to sediment transport and morphology. Integrating knowledge from these diverse sites will provide deeper understanding of the evolution of coastal environments following mangrove removal. Hannah enjoys working internationally and developing connections with scientists from different backgrounds to build global scientific community.

Emmi Kurosawa
University of Massachusetts

Emmi Kurosawa is a PhD student in the Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Emmi is particularly interested in all aspects related to the evolution, development, and biomechanics of Utricularia, a freshwater aquatic carnivorous plant. Her dissertation focuses on finding a correlation between nitrogen stable isotopes in Utricularia and wetland water quality. In the upcoming LOREX internship at the Centre for Coastal Biogeochemisty, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia, she will be working with Dr. Naomi Wells and Dr. Joanne Oakes to establish an index to predict early eutrophication using the changes in nitrogen stable isotope in Utricularia. In her earlier professional career, she worked on odorant, pheromone, and taste receptor identification and characterization in Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School under the guidance of the Nobel prize winner Prof. Dr. Linda Buck. She then joined Serono Inc. (later EMD Serono Inc.), a pharmaceutical company, and devoted in protein engineering of infertility drugs and multispecific antibodies to treat cancer and inflammatory diseases for over 15 years. Emmi is also the vice president of the New England Carnivorous Plant Society, based in Dracut, MA, focusing on cultivation, conservation, public education, and research on carnivorous plants.

Angelique Rosa-Marin
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU)

Angelique is performing her master's degree in Environmental Science with a concentration in Marine and Estuaries Ecosystems. Since the population of coral reef ecosystems is declining exponentially, she is interested in the use of foraminifers as an indicator tool to better understand the actual reef status and further predict the coral well-being. The application of ecological indexes such as the FoRAM Index (FI) can address reef conditions. FI has been applied worldwide (e.g., Caribbean, Australia, and the Mediterranean) as a bioindicator device. The FI is a method used to determine the water quality of the reef's surroundings using foraminifers as indicators; FI values will reflect the actual reef conditions and will suggest further development in the ecosystem. Angelique will apply the FI in coral restoration locations; moreover, she will be evaluating foraminiferal assemblages from Heron Island, Australia. Through this project, Angelique is seeking to contribute to resources managers with a rapid and cost-effective biomonitoring tool to improve management efforts.

Rachel Weisend
Texas A&M University

Rachel Weisend a fourth-year PhD candidate at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. She was a part of the inaugural LOREX Cohort who conducted research at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia. Rachel’s research focuses on microbial interactions within the sediment of mangrove ecosystems and their effect on methane emissions.

During her research exchange in Lismore, Rachel collected sediment for geochemical and molecular microbiological analyses. At these sites, Rachel also measured methane and carbon dioxide flux. This project aims to compare mangrove systems in the southern hemisphere to previously sampled systems in the northern hemisphere along the Texas coast. Multivariate statistical analyses will be used to compare changes in geochemistry and the microbial community structure and function.

Rachel is passionate about integrating scientific research into policies on coastal systems, working with undergraduate students, and discussing scientific concepts to her local community. Rachel has enjoyed being a part of the LOREX program expanding her scientific community both within Australia and the United States.

Keiko Wilkins
Miami University

Keiko Wilkins is finishing her Master’s of Science in Biology and a certificate in Applied Statistics at Miami University (Oxford, OH). She also completed her Bachelor’s of Science in Biological Sciences at Miami University. Her current research focuses on the effects of increasing terrestrial inputs on freshwater zooplankton. After graduating (January 2020), Keiko plans to pursue her PhD in marine biology with a focus on the effects of climate change and microplastics on marine species. Through her first marine research project at Southern Cross University, Keiko is hoping to enhance her knowledge of coral reef ecosystems.

Inter University Institute for Marine Science in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, Israel
Website: http://www.iui-eilat.ac.il
Contact person: Simon Berkowicz, [email protected]

Ashley Brooke Cohen
Stony Brook University

Ashley is a 5th year PhD candidate in biogeochemistry at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, NY in Dr. Gordon Taylor’s laboratory. Ashley specializes in the geobiology, or the interaction of geochemical processes and microbes, in oxygen-free environments. Her dissertation work at the permanently oxygen-free Fayetteville Green Lake, NY, is focused on how the succession of microbial carbon fixation pathways and sulfur metabolisms along redox gradients influences stable isotope signatures. She is especially interested in how they are compartmentalized into suspended and sinking particulate matter in the water column, and ultimately, what is incorporated into sediment. She hopes this will provide insight into which early earth anoxic water column processes are reflected in the geologic record. Ashley combines microbiology techniques including Illumina sequencing, stable isotope probing, radiotracer rate measurements, qPCR, and fluorescence in situ hybridization with geochemical techniques to answer these questions.

For Ashley’s LOREX project, she worked with Dr. Gilad Antler at the Inter University Institute for Marine Science, Eilat, Israel on enrichment incubation experiments using sediment cores from 420m in the Red Sea. The goal of the experiment was to determine if elemental sulfur would be disproportionated- split into sulfide and sulfate without a terminal electron acceptor- which strongly fractionates sulfate and sulfide isotopes. Over the course of two months, a full suite of geochemical and microbiology samples was taken, including samples for sulfur and iron concentrations, sulfur isotopes, cell counts, and DNA.

Connor Love
University of California, Santa Barbara

Connor is a PhD student at University of California, Santa Barbara (under professor David Valentine) who studies the flow of matter through organisms in oligotrophic ecosystems using compound-specific isotope analysis. Connor first started studying hydrocarbon production by common marine cyanobacteria in the open ocean and how this may support oil degrading bacteria that can respond to oil spills. This work utilized compound-specific isotope analysis and led him to use this technique for other systems, particularly corals.

Connor studied with professor Maoz Fine at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel. He created an artificial food web in Professor Maoz Fines infamous Red Sea Simulator to constrain amino acid specific isotope ratios that may be found in nature. It is known that coral heterotrophy greatly enhances their ability to survive stressful times but measuring coral feeding and metabolism in nature, particularly for nitrogen, remains elusive. Connor conducted a several week long feeding experiment to investigate coral nitrogen and carbon sourcing and metabolism within the coral-algal symbiosis using 15N and 13C ratios of specific amino acids. These data will be used to support future field campaigns aimed to identify corals with high heterotrophic capacities that may outcompete other corals in the face of rapidly changing oceans. 

University of Haifa, Israel

The Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, Haifa
Website: http://marsci.haifa.ac.il/index.php/en/
Contact person: Ilana Berman-Frank, [email protected]

Elena Forchielli
Boston University

Elena a fourth-year PhD student in molecular cellular biology and biochemistry at Boston University, is one participant who will conduct research this coming fall at the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences. Forchielli has previously visited University of Haifa for collaborative research with the Charney School’s Dr. Daniel Sher. She will be working once again with Sher as part of her LOREX experience.

Elena’s current work is focused on using metabolic network reconstructions to bridge the gap between genomics and microbial community function. To this end, Elena uses genome-scale computational models in concert with systematic laboratory experiments to predict the nutritional requirements and metabolites produced by a diverse set of heterotrophic marine bacteria, and whether these features can predict syntrophic relationships between different species. Elena hopes to use her LOREX project to move beyond the laboratory, and test the ability to resolve metabolic interactions in natural marine microbial communities using a combination of field observations and bottle incubation experiments.

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LOREX: Participant Biographies

Principal Investigators

Adina Paytan - Research Professor, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

Michael Pace - ASLO President

Linda Duguay - ASLO Past-President

Brittany Schieler, ASLO Director of Communications and Programs

LOREX and Science Communication Fellow

Rachel Weisend - Spring and Summer 2023

Former LOREX Fellows

LOREX Participants

Dalhousie University

Haifa University, Israel

Southern Cross University Lismore

Umeå University

University of Montreal

Université du Québec à Montréal

University of Haifa, Israel

Inter University Institute for Marine Science in Eilat, Israel

University of Haifa, Israel

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